


Duty

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Series: What You Leave Behind [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Doomed Relationship, Dwarf Noble Origin, Dwarven Politics, F/M, Falling In Love, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 04:46:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6224539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gorim doesn't dare think how close he's become to the Princess he's sworn to serve.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Duty

The deep blast of a horn announces the arrival of their company and, though they are more than half an hour from arriving when the gilded doors of the city float into view, Gorim feels the men at his side ease in the bellowing echoes. The expedition was a brutal one, and it has was a long trip home, slowed by the Princess’s insistence that they carry even the mortally wounded back to Orzammar rather than abandon them to a lonely death in the Deep Roads. Though Princess Aeducan sent scouts and a runner ahead of them to clear traps and darkspawn, the abandoned roads are unsettling for even the veterans, and all are glad to be home.

The company spreads along the road, the whole and healthy increasing their pace now that safety is in sight, but Gorim turns back and presses against their forward motion until he finds the Princess at the rear with her most injured soldiers. Her expression is unreadable, but her eyes sweep the ground with naked shame when no one is looking at her. 

No one except Gorim, rather.

Gorim watches her all the time, more often even than might be appropriate for the singular person responsible for watching over her. In the two years since he won the honor to be her second, he has been honored further by her father’s favor and the glory he has earned at her side, but it is the honor of the princess’s confidence that he holds most dear. Driven as she is to earn the Ancestors’ favor by her honorable acts, _kind_ as she is, it is no surprise to Gorim that Princess Aeducan has taken the losses of this expedition to heart. Gorim admires it about her, as he admires so much more about her, the Void take him for it.

“Lady Aeducan.” He announces himself before approaching her and watches as she slips back into the role of infallible warrior and princess. “Orzammar welcomes you home.”

“Gorim.” Her mouth lifts in a smile could not be seen as anything but formal courtesy, but Gorim is not imagining the spark in her eyes when they alight on him. But Princess Aeducan does not correct him, does not tell him that she hears no welcome in the horns greeting their arrival. Rather, she presses her fist to her armored chest, bows her head and says, “Lead the company. I will enter Orzammar when the last of us are safely through her gates.”

The last of us. Gorim can nearly hear her choking on the bitterness in the words. 

“The lieutenant will lead,” he says and falls in with her, a full step behind her every move. “My place is at your side.”

Princess Aeducan can hardly argue with a sentiment such as that. They have been less formal on this expedition, taking meals in camp and sharing duties equally with the rest of the company. Gorim led scouting parties and Princess Aeducan fought valiantly without his shield to catch blows for her. They have fought and suffered casualties to relentless hordes of darkspawn, but it is in Orzammar where she needs him beside her the most. 

When the last of the company is through the gates, Gorim steps in front of his princess to announce her return to the guards. The ceremonial welcome to one of royal blood is shouted around them and they enter the city battered, weary, and with precious little to show for the time spent away.

The expedition departed with one-hundred thirty soldiers, scouts, and support officers but only ninety-seven have returned. Eleven of those will not survive the week. Princess Aeducan will speak to the families of the dead about the honor of their sacrifice, but Gorim knows she resents that they died to take a single system of caves near Ortan Thaig. The only consolation Gorim can offer the Princess is that more might have died if not for her, but he elects to stay silent as they pass through the Diamond Quarter on their slow, agonizing march to the Royal Palace.

The streets clear for them, but a clear path does nothing to protect them from the persistent stares that follow the Princess. She may grieve for the defeat, but when she is before the ever-watching eyes of Orzammar, Princess Aeducan does not break apart.

Inside the Palace, Gorim learns that King Endrin is with the Assembly for the day, and the Princess gently announces that she will await her father’s summons in the family’s personal wing. Gorim follows her, intending to take his post outside her door as she rests, but when they come to the end of the corridor leading to her chambers, she makes a silent gesture that Gorim has come to understand to mean that she wishes a word with him. He follows, pushing the door closed behind them.

“Will you need assistance with your armor, my lady?” 

Caring for her armor is among his traditional duties as Second, but helping her into it is one duty that Princess Aeducan has never accepted his help with, something Gorim has come to be thankful for. He has trouble enough keeping his attention on his duties and not the tense, uncomfortable joy it gives him to be near her, something he has deliberately chosen not to acknowledge, even to himself.

“No, Gorim,” she answers, her voice stripped raw with weary emotion. She unbuckles her armor on her own, but allows Gorim to take it to the armor stand in the corner. He does this silently, mirroring her own contemplative silence until the armor stand is covered in the her complete armor set and she disappears behind a screen to change out of her worn, filthy clothing.

“Ancestors -- you did everything the way you were meant to,” says Gorim when the silence is more than he can bear. 

“I suppose that excuses the defeat,” she presses, her only loud enough to reach him where he stands. “I will tell the families of the dead that their children and spouses are dead, but that I did things just the way I ought.”

“What more could you have done, my lady?” Gorim doesn’t mean to explode, but it’s not fair for her to subject herself to this sort of ill-use. It is even less fair that she gives so little credit to the men and women who rely on her to trust her decisions.

She comes back from behind the screen, belting her tunic into place over the soft, woolen tights she wears when alone in her chambers where she might not be seen. “It’s Bryn,” she corrects, as she has done dozens of times before now. As though Gorim would change his mind and replace his formal address for her with anything that might endanger the well-defined role he has in her life. 

This time, she looks so utterly defeated that the urge to fold his arms around her is more insistent than usual. Princess Aeducan can and has bested the greatest warriors in Orzammar, but strength and shield cannot protect her kind heart from breaking over this. There will be whispers, perhaps, among the deshyrs without ties to the warrior caste, but they will respect her all the same when they exhaust themselves with gossip. Princess Aeducan is only seventeen and this is hardly her first expedition into Deep Roads.

Gorim shifts his weight from one foot to another, then back again, biting down hard to keep from reaching out to comfort her. Finally, when he cannot stay silent another moment, he asks, “Do you trust me, Princess?”

Her dark eyes widen as they flit up and search his face. Gorim might think anyone else was thinking how to play him, but her expression is earnest, not calculating. “With my life,” she answers, as seriously as he’s ever heard her. Her steadfast stare is enough to cast doubt on his reservations about reaching out to her, and it heats his cheeks, but Gorim does not look away. 

“Do you trust yourself?” 

At this, her expression turns peculiar, and she breaks their eye-contact. “I should have done more for them. If I had--”

Resisting the urge to reach for her exhausts his willpower, but Gorim cannot allow his tangled-up admiration for his princess to keep him from fulfilling his duty as her Second. So, instead he continues, “If you had, you’d be dead, too, my lady. Every one of us would die for you, or to do what you asked us. I--we trust in you, and you should trust yourself as much as we do.” 

Gorim seeks her face again with his eyes, waits until she lifts her gaze from the floor. “You did everything you could for us.”

Princess Aeducan’s mouth twitches upward in the faintest promise of a smile when she reaches in front of her and takes Gorim’s hands into hers. The slightest weight of her hand on his glove nearly breaks his resolve, and Gorim tries not to think about the spike in his heart rate. 

“What would I do without you, Gorim?” Her tone is warm and light, everything but the formal address she should use with someone like him. She makes him feel as though she considers him her equal, and it is this warm-hearted goodness that Gorim must protect her from, lest someone take advantage of it and ruin her. Orzammar is a dangerous place for someone like his princess, but he has never thought it dangerous for him, as well. 

“I think you might manage without me,” he tries weakly, just before he excuses himself to guard the corridor. He knows on a primal level that he ought to leave her now, to reset the formal distance between Princess and Second, or suffer for blurring the line of duty and something he dares not name. But even the firmly-established traditions that have guided him since he met her seem to have changed because of nothing more than a gentle touch and a kind word. It is only a matter of time before this will explode as violently as an unstable lyrium vein, but he can’t, won’t go back to the way things were. It hardly matters what he does now, it must end in disaster. 

Gorim only hopes that he isn’t her ruin in the end, too.


End file.
